


We Don't Care For Lovers (If Loving's All That They've Got)

by th_esaurus



Category: Rush (2013)
Genre: Casual Sex, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-28
Updated: 2013-09-28
Packaged: 2017-12-27 21:47:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/983988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Don't rationalise this, Niki, that's the worst thing I've ever heard you say," James hisses, running his hand through his hair. Then through Niki's.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Don't Care For Lovers (If Loving's All That They've Got)

James has a vividly bloodshot eye, and bruised skin around his cheekbone, and a scab of dried blood on his brow that he scratches at mindlessly while he talks. He should be in his own goddamn pit, with his own goddamn mechanics. Not here, with his petty battle wounds, bothering Niki.

 

He has the medicinal tang of dope on his lips. Not on his clothes, not all over him, just the leftovers from a tote or two; bad rituals instilled in him by that ass Hesketh, and Niki waves his hand briskly to make sure James knows he disapproves. James pulls a sourpuss face. He thinks he looks like Niki, and makes himself laugh.

 

"You fucked your face up," Niki tells him dryly. "Get it out of my face, it's ugly."

 

"You must loathe mirrors," James shoots back calmly, making a fuss of Niki's carefully arranged set-up, his tools and his gloves and his helmet. Niki snatches the gloves out of his hands, puts them on. He doesn't need them yet. But he can't stand James' fidgeting.

 

"Tell me what you want to tell me or get out," he says, finally. Marlene is talking genially in front of the cameras just outside the pits. She has her hair up in a bun, and James glances at the bare back of her neck. It's not her he's looking at, as such. Just the draw of her skin.

 

Niki taps him sharply on the side of his jaw to bring his attention back. "It's a bit of fun," James mutters.

 

"Yes? A bit of fun? The same sort of fun that got you punched in the face, hmm?"

 

"Go easy," James says, defensive all of a sudden.

 

"Don't look at my wife. Fuck off to your girlfriends."

 

"You're wound up," James says, and grabs Niki's hands, grabs him at the wrist so it's harder to twist out, and pulls Niki's arms up as if to stretch him out, loosen him up. He's got a good few inches on Niki, but none of the strength or discipline. Can't manage to break the lock of Niki's elbows. So he changes tactics, darts forward and plants a wet kiss on Niki's forehead. His hair's been receding for years, so it's an easy damn target. James' lips are cracked; he's been too long in the sun.

 

Marlene is laughing at them widely. James plays up for her, grinning and gurning and pulling Niki into a loose headlock. His scab has come off and his temple is bleeding thickly, just a smudge around his eyebrow.

 

Niki grabs at the back of his tracksuit, gets a good fistful of it. "Don't come to me looking like shit to make yourself feel better," he says, flat and firm. "Go on, now."

 

"Christ. Yes, Matron," James replies, but he doesn't roll his eyes. He rubs his skin with the heel of his palm, licks it clean.

 

Niki watches him jog back to his team, and wishes he had any sense of self-preservation. But then, he always thought wishes were for weak men.

 

*

 

It's a good distraction technique. Keeps James' mind from wandering, teaches him how to focus on the moment. Before a race – an hour or two before, never closer to the signal than that – it helps dispel some of the nervous adrenaline that so often renders him violently ill by the roadside.

 

"Don't rationalise this, Niki, that's the worst thing I've ever heard you say," James hisses, running his hand through his hair. Then through Niki's.

 

"It's not my job to make you feel good about it," Niki snaps, batting him away. He spits to the side, licks his drying lips.

 

"Mind your teeth—"

 

"Fuck _you._ "

 

"It's a completely valid request, under the circum—" James breathes in fast and high, "— _circumstances_."

 

He's sitting with his knees up and his back against the door, because Niki refuses to do this while James stands over him. Keep him focused. Keep him humble. For the same reasons, he does not let James come in his mouth. Guesses when he's close enough and pulls off, wipes his lips, lets James swear at him and finish himself off with his hand. He stays close though, crouches between James' open legs and watches his face. Every time he orgasms, he looks like he's experiencing it for the first time, and Niki presumes it's why he finds it so addictive.

 

He tries to pull Niki in for a quick kiss after, and Niki elbows him sharply in the stomach. "I'm not your girl," he bites, "Don't fucking placate me."

 

He allows James to straighten the collar of his overalls.

 

He allows that.

 

*

 

It's Niki who takes James' points away from him in Spain, but nobody discusses the Brands Hatch issue with him. Ferrari takes that into their own hands. He doesn't talk to Audetto for the rest of the night. James has been punished enough for his transgressions.

 

"Proud of yourself?" James asks him, cornering him.

 

"Just appeal it, James—"

 

"Oh, simple as that? First fucking Brit in two fucking decades to win on home turf, and I should just appeal it? Fuck off, Niki. Go home and wank over your rule book some more. Maybe you'll find another hidden gem to trip me up in the next race." James looks mad enough to spit. His cheeks are rouged up with flushed anger, and he's breathing hard through his mouth. They only ever argue about the races. Only genuinely.

 

James punches the wall next to Niki's head. It's abrupt and forceful, and he hisses, shakes his hand out, flecking blood and plaster onto Niki's shoes.

 

"Fuck," he says, quieter. "You're—destroying me, you know."

 

"You're doing well enough on your own," Niki replies, ever so calm.

 

*

 

James calls his hotel room, drunk, from a payphone. He didn't know Niki's room number, and had to shout his name four times to the girl on the desk, he says, before she understood what he was on about.

 

"I don't know where my shoes are," he says. He sounds almost triumphant.

 

"Don't call me like this," Niki chides him. "Get a taxi. I don't care."

 

"Yes you do," James scoffs. Niki can almost taste the beer on his breath through the receiver. "You want people to think you don't care."

 

"I said I don't care about _you._ Get off the telephone, asshole. I'm asleep."

 

"Yes you do," James says again. He sucks in a deep inhale, as though to sober himself up.

 

"We have a race in two days."

 

"That's irrelevant."

 

"Bullshit."

 

"It's irrelevant right now."

 

Niki manages to glean some vague information about where James is, enough that he can call him a taxi in polished German. He loathes small talk, but James won't hang up. He tells Niki how much he wishes he could have been there tonight; that there was a girl there at the party, a slight little thing, wide eyes and mousey hair, and Niki would have liked her so much.

 

"I like my wife," Niki says, shortly.

 

"She looked like you," James goes on. "Not a pretty thing."

 

"Did you sleep with her?"

 

"Yes."

 

Niki pinches the bridge of his nose, rubs at the skin there. "Get off the line, James. I'm sending you a taxi. I'm not paying for it."

 

"Niki—"

 

"Don’t call me," Niki says, and hangs up the phone.

 

*

 

Audetto organises a meeting at the Nürburgring on Niki's behalf, because Niki is sucking James off in the dank shower room.

 

And then they sit in a room together, four feet apart, and James gets everyone they know to agree on Niki's cowardice.

 

*

 

Niki is not made of porcelain. He is a human being, made of brittle bone and soft flesh and stringy muscle; he can be broken without being shattered. When Marlene holds his hand by the hospital bedside, she holds it unrelentingly, and he appreciates that. He would rather be sore than coddled.

 

He watches James on his shit little television, and tells the doctors to pump his lungs again.

 

He's not made of porcelain. Again.

 

*

 

James has a big, thumbprint bruise under his Adam's apple where it looks like someone tried to throttle him. Drunk men tend to be violent, and jilted men even moreso, and that's the kind of company James keeps, whether he means to or not.

 

"Stop getting into fights," Niki tells him, frowning. "One day someone will punch out your lights, and you won't be able to race, and then where will I be?"

 

"Your concern's touching," James mutters, rubbing his knuckles over the bruise. He leans back in bed, stretching languidly and without shame. Niki spent four weeks in bed, and doesn't find it particularly restful these days. So he gets up, puts on a robe, finds a chair, and sits across from James with his feet up on the mattress. James rubs at Niki's ankle absently, leans over to kiss the jut of his anklebone.

 

Niki kicks at him and the jerking movement makes him clench up, hiss out.

 

James has learnt to look at the ceiling when he feels like pitying him. "Niki," he starts. "I'm really glad you're—"

 

"Shut up. Shut up. You asshole."

 

"Right-o," James sighs, rolling over. His shoulders are very wide, and can't talk back. But at least Niki doesn't have to frown at them so fiercely.

 

*

 

They fly out to Japan the next day. Niki wishes it weren't raining. Wishes are for weak men.


End file.
